Basically that. I wanted to play Minecraft this summer since it’s been ages and introduce it to my kid. Didn’t realize I’d missed the deadline to migrate my Mojang account to a Microsoft one back in 2023.

I wish I could still access my old account. I really tried. But it’s lost. I could buy a new copy of the game. I could upload my old skin, the one I made myself in 2012, but it wouldn’t be the same. I won’t have my name, and I can’t claw it back from Microsoft. Worse still, the account I bought my partner when we lived apart, so we could raise pigs together, is gone as well.

Maybe I should buy some new copies. Start over, new usernames, new skins. So many things have changed since I last played. Old pastimes are subsumed by new responsibilities and new joys. Life is sedimentary like that. Some times we must accept that we can’t unearth the past.

You can catch a glimpse of my character if you look up my username. He’s what I used to be, in my favorite shirt and cardigan that no longer fit, and my favorite beanie I lost on a climbing trip. I’m glad he still has them. I like to think my and my partner’s old Minecraft avatars are still present somehow in the digital ether of Microsoft’s servers. Tending to their pigs and spaghetti minecart tracks and falling asleep together over Skype.